Part 36 (1/2)

In another instant a rope struck his face. He grasped it, twisted it tightly round Percy's body and his own, tied a rough knot with his last strength, and then lost consciousness.

When he recovered his senses, his first sensation was that of intense pain--so intense that it extracted a groan from him.

”That's right, rub away; and pour some more brandy down his throat,” a voice said.

Then he became conscious that he was being rubbed with hot flannels. He opened his eyes, and saw a gleaming of moving machinery, and the red glare of furnaces.

”Where am I?” he asked, at last.

”In the engine room of the gunboat Farcey,” a voice said.

”I am suffering agony,” Ralph murmured, between his teeth.

”I daresay,” the officer who was standing by him answered. ”You were pretty near frozen to death. Luckily your life belts kept you from taking in any water, but it was a near squeak. Another three minutes in the water, and the doctor says it would have been all up with you.”

”Where is my brother?” Ralph asked suddenly; sitting up, with a full consciousness of all that had pa.s.sed.

”He is coming round,” the officer said. ”He was farther gone than you were; and his heart's action was altogether suspended, from the cold. His limbs are twitching now, and the doctor says he will do.

”You call him your brother, but I suppose you mean your son?”

”Please lend me some clothes,” Ralph said. ”I can stand, now.”

Some clothes had already been got in readiness, and warmed; and in a couple of minutes Ralph was kneeling by his brother's side. Percy was now coming to, and was suffering agonies similar to those which Ralph himself had experienced, from the recommencement of circulation in his limbs. He looked round, utterly bewildered; for he had become insensible before the Farcey's gun had given notice of her proximity. He smiled, however, when his eyes fell on Ralph's face.

”It is all right, Percy, thank G.o.d,” Ralph said. ”We are on board the gunboat Farcey and, in ten minutes, we shall be landed in the heart of Paris.”

In another five minutes, Percy was sufficiently recovered to begin to dress. The commander of the Farcey now turned to Ralph.

”Your son has had a very narrow shave of it, sir.”

”Son!” Ralph said, ”He is my brother.”

The officer looked surprised.

”How old do you take me to be?” Ralph asked.

”Forty-five or fifty,” the officer said.

”I shall not be seventeen for some months,” Ralph answered.

The officer looked at him with an air of intense astonishment, and there was a burst of laughter from the men standing round. The commandant frowned angrily at them.

”Quite so, my dear sir,” he said, soothingly. ”I was only joking with you. It is evident that you are not yet seventeen.”

”You think I have lost my senses, with the shock,” Ralph said, smiling. ”I can a.s.sure you that that is my age. My beard and whiskers are so firmly fixed on, with cobbler's wax, that I shall have an awful trouble to get them off; and my hair the same. If you feel along here, from one ear to the other, you will feel a ridge.

That is the cobbler's wax, that sticks all this ma.s.s of frizzled hair on.

”Did you not notice that both my brother's and my face and hands were much darker than the rest of our skin?”